Frisky Business (PC) review

"You’ll enjoy diddling with it once or twice in the moment, before washing your hands of it. "

Ironically, if you’re picturing a young Tom Cruise at the height of his sexual powers, sliding across the floor in tighty-whities and socked feet, you probably aren’t the target market. If you think of Tom as post-couch trampling Ethan Hunt, and you’re looking for a short, pervy visual novel that doesn’t take itself seriously, features mostly titillating artwork and has a good heart and sense of humour, you might want to try your hand (don’t lie to yourself) at Frisky Business.

Given your starring turn as Falco Frisk of Frisk Investigative Solutions, the developers did the best possible thing and went full self-aware, self-parody: the game is fraught with camp, and genre stereotypes – but it does encourage you to be kind, it emphasizes teamwork, and it manages to be funny at times in spite of itself.

You’ll get about two hours of wooing three extremely top heavy (duh!) main quest women along with some side chicks, which culminates in clicking on their private parts to stimulate them over their clothes, or in the nude if you downloaded the free patch. All the usual perv game girl tropes are here: the shy girl who needs coddling, the spicy girl who responds to aggression, the bimbo who needs you to dumb it down, the ‘freak’, the threesome. As Falco, the wise-cracking, spiky coiffed, Dane Cook type, you aren’t alone: rounding out the least creative buddy pairing ever, you’ll bounce ideas off your bespectacled, geek partner who is good at doing all the uncool stuff (the real detective work) but is hopelessly awkward and worships your alpha.

The case details, then: It seems an evil clown is terrorizing three hot girls, who live together (duh!). You’ve got to ‘protect’ the ladies and catch the clown. It’s unlikely that you’ll get the good ending on your first play, but once you know how you’re expected to behave in order to unlock it – the bad guy gives us some subtle-as-a-sledgehammer hints as you fail – it’s easy to go back and make the necessary adjustments. You’ll probably want to choose a different girl to pursue the second time around while you’re at it. With a good and a bad ending behind you, and a couple of main story girls and side quest girls under your belt, you’ll probably want to call it quits – I know I did.

If you do, you’ll have experienced most of what Frisky Business is about, save a sexual encounter or two. And if you grind your way to 100% completion, it won’t be the worst thing you’ll have done, and it won’t take very long – it will just be monotonous, once the initial charm and dare I say, excitement of winning at these women wears off, and you’re left with a very simplistic mystery with few markedly different paths on offer and pretty sexy artwork that becomes less and less so as the game marches on. Frisky Business was released at a pretty low price point, and that price point seems fair for what it is. If fan service VNs are your thing, you could do worse than this almost-budget title that performs as such; you’ll enjoy diddling with it once or twice in the moment, before washing your hands of it.

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EmP posted May 11, 2017:

Just so you know, I’ll be trying to find you suggestive VNs to review in the future. I dunno; the idea just amuses me.

It’s a good rapid-fire review, too. It’s almost as if you ran through it quick to get someone off your back and so you can start bullying them to finding your something new to write about. The little shots about the target audience not kidding themselves about what they’ve purchased were perhaps the highlights; there’s no point pretending anyone’s tuned into this game for the highbrow plot. I liked the shot at the nerdy but competent sidekick trope myself, though. Gots to have someone to drive the plot forward while the writer’s self insert nails all the chicks, yo.

I’m mildly impressed how you manage to write these short to-the-point reviews that still have everything you need to say in them. And that’s all your praise used up for 2017.

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